The religious and the rational

Excellent schools tend to choose their pupils. Is there another way?

PARENTS seeking the best education for their offspring often look to ancient institutions. Small wonder that schools run by either the Catholic church or the Church of England are often high on their list. Almost a quarter of all children in the state system attend a religious school, most of them Anglican- or Catholic-run primary schools.

In his drive to give parents more choice in educating their children, Tony Blair raised the profile of church schools by encouraging existing ones to expand and new ones to set up shop. The former prime minister was also keen on incorporating other religions into the state system. The first state-funded Muslim and Sikh schools opened soon after he took power, and the first Hindu school in 2008.

Mr Blair's successors have lacked his zeal, but religious schools continue to flourish. One reason is that their pupils tend to do better than others in exams. In 2009, 57% of them at around age 16 passed national exams (GCSEs) with acceptable grades, including those in maths and English, compared with 51% at non-religious state schools.

Studies suggest that this may have more to do with the intake of students than with the quality of education. Faith schools are allowed to select pupils according to whether their parents are observant religiously—or pretend to be—and such parents are often of higher educational attainment or commitment than the common run. They are frequently just plain richer, too. The proportion of children entitled to free school meals at Catholic and Church of England schools is lower than at non-religious state schools. The Church of England has promised to set aside places at its new schools for children whose parents profess other religions or none at all, but the pledge has no legal force.

The new Conservative/Liberal Democrat government wants to rely on methods other than overt selection to improve results in state schools. Michael Gove, the education secretary, has rushed through two main sorts of supply-side reforms. The previous government had come up with “academies” to revive failing, mainly inner-city schools and given them certain freedoms. Academies do not have to stick zealously to the national curriculum, for example, and they are not constrained by the national pay deals for teachers that hobble their counterparts elsewhere in the state sector (see table). They may not, however, select students: they are required to take the most local ones, even when an academy replaces that vanishingly rare thing, a failing church school.

Mr Gove invited all schools rated “outstanding” by inspectors to become academies. Some 900 expressed an interest in doing so. But on September 1st Mr Gove said that just 32 schools would be switching to academies at the start of term. Many had not had time to complete the process, the official line goes, and a further 110 are expected to become academies in the coming months. Others say that heavy lobbying by teaching unions against changing status deterred many schools.

Succeeding without selecting will also be the challenge for Mr Gove's other supply-side initiative: free schools. Taking a leaf out of Sweden's book, he wants groups of parents or teachers (or in principle religious leaders) to set up their own schools, which will enjoy from the outset the same freedom as academies. They too are likely to be more modest in number than Mr Gove had hoped. A lack of clarity over funding has stymied attempts to recruit to schools that exist only on paper.

Battersea, a London borough on the south bank of the Thames, for example, lacks sufficient state secondary school places to meet demand, and children must either leave the area or their parents pay to send them to private schools. The Neighbourhood Schools Campaign, a parent group dedicated to creating a new state secondary school, has found a site, the old Bolingbroke Hospital; persuaded Wandsworth council to buy and lease back the building; and found an education charity, ARK, to run the proposed school. But until it is guaranteed the go-ahead, it cannot begin to recruit seriously. There are only a few months to go before parents must apply for secondary school places starting in September 2011.

For the Bolingbroke group and others like them, opening in 2012 is a more realistic target. That would give the schools time to recruit staff and prospective parents confidence that their children would not be taught in the corner of a building site. Legislation to reform the school system may have been rushed through Parliament, but the momentum has yet to be felt in the world outside Westminster.